Cold to the Bone Read online

  None of them looked like they had slept.

  The tension in the room vibrated with a frequency Nicole wasn’t able to tap into. It was more than the arrival of bad news. This family had been awake and alert long before Nicole arrived. If the exhaustion around their eyes and the tightness of their shoulders and limbs were anything to go by, they’d been waiting for Nicole about as long as they’d been waiting for Beatrice.

  “You have a daughter,” Nicole began.

  “Yes, Beatrice,” the mother said. She leaned forward, and Nicole recognized the look of hope in the woman’s eyes, the defeat in her flat mouth. And Nicole felt a tremor in her own limbs, an unsteady connection to this woman, this mother, who was not unlike Nicole herself, whose worst nightmare would be the loss of her son. Her stomach churned with the news she would impart. There were no soft words, there would be no promises. Simply an end.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Esparza,” Nicole began.

  “Have you found her?” the mother persisted.

  “You knew she was missing?” Nicole countered. “But you didn’t call the police.”

  “We weren’t sure,” Dr. Esparza stepped into the conversation. “She has friends here already. They could be talking and she lost track of time.”

  “We told her be back at two. She’s not so late that we should call the police.”

  They were grasping at hope. Did they already sense how slippery it was? How fragile?

  “I wish I had better news,” Nicole said. She stood in the center of the room, turned so that the mother was her focal point but also so that she could keep both male Esparzas in her scope. Her words caused a ripple through the family. Shoulders jerked; facial tics were triggered. The tension inside Mrs. Esparza reached a breaking point and was released in a sharp humming from her lips. “We found Beatrice early this morning, out on Lake Maria. She’s dead.”

  Joaquin straightened in the doorway then, his arms dropping to his sides. “You’re wrong,” he said.

  A whistling noise rose from the throat of Mrs. Esparza, almost as if her airway had narrowed.

  Dr. Esparza wavered on his feet. His hands were stuffed into the pocket of his hoodie and his elbows flapped once, twice.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Nicole said. She made her breaths long and deep and waited, mired in their pain. Steady. Ready to offer what she could but unable to ignore a voice in the back of her brain. Some things weren’t adding up. The tension in the room when she’d entered, the division she sensed between the family members. The body of a young girl on a frozen lake.

  Nicole thought of Jordan at home, sleeping peacefully, and wanted to be there, with her son, holding him, though he was much too old for that and seldom allowed it now.

  “We need a positive identification,” Nicole said, and pulled the snow bunny ID pass, still in its evidence bag, out of her coat pocket. She held it up, and the father closed the space between them. He touched his fingers to the plastic, and Nicole noticed their fine tremor. He stroked his daughter’s face and confirmed, “Yes, my daughter. My beautiful Beatrice.”

  Mrs. Esparza began keening then, and her husband crossed the room and sat down beside her. Joaquin kept his vigilance in the doorway. There was more in his face than shock; there was surprise. He had believed he’d hear something else. His parents had hoped for something different, but the teen had actually expected it.

  Later that day, Esparza would have to come to the hospital for an official ID. Nicole explained this to him.

  “Of course,” he agreed immediately, but his voice was hollow, the words adrift. He held his wife’s hand, and his gaze was fixed on their woven fingers.

  Nicole stepped farther into the room, hoping to draw his attention.

  “When was the last time you saw your daughter, sir?” Nicole directed her question to the father but watched Joaquin. The shock in the young man’s face eased and the surprise morphed into something else. Grief, certainly, but anger too.

  “Dr. Esparza?” Nicole prompted.

  “Last night. We had dinner together and returned to the room,” he said.

  “Eight twenty.” The words were whispered, patchy. Mrs. Esparza lifted her eyes from the study of her hands and hooked Nicole’s gaze. “We left the room at eight twenty, my husband and I.”

  “We skied the moonlight run,” Dr. Esparza clarified.

  “Yesterday we stayed in with the girls—our little ones. They have colds.”

  “We have two young daughters,” the doctor said. “Not even teenagers yet.”

  “They are eight and ten,” the mother said.

  Color was slowly returning to their faces and strength to their words.

  “And you, Joaquin? When was the last time you saw your sister?”

  Nicole stepped toward him. The young man was lanky, had more height than his father but the same slim build. But where his sister had had rounded cheeks and curves, he was broad angles and plains. And no small amount of defiance. His arms were crossed again and he shrugged before answering.

  “Last night. We ordered cable.” His gaze adjusted until he was staring at the blank face of the flat-screen TV. “I brewed hot chocolate in the coffeepot.”

  “What was the movie?”

  “Fast and Furious six.”

  “Did Beatrice watch with you?”

  “Some. She only likes reality shows.”

  “What time did she leave the room?”

  “I didn’t see her leave.”

  “The movie was that good?”

  “I went to bed,” Joaquin said. “I was tired.”

  “What time?”

  He eased his shoulder against the jamb and didn’t pretend to give her question thought. “Nine thirty.”

  She called his bluff. “It doesn’t look like you ever made it to bed.” The pajamas, for all his vinegar, could simply be a costume call.

  Nicole turned to the parents. “What time did you get back to the room?”

  “After eleven,” the father said.

  “It was midnight,” the mother corrected.

  “Exactly?”

  “I heard the bells chime in the lobby. I think there’s a clock there. It chimed twelve times as we were waiting for the elevator.”

  Dr. Esparza spread his hands. “So it was midnight.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Live?” Dr. Esparza repeated, struggling with the change in questioning.

  “Yes. You’re here on vacation, right?”

  “Oh, yes.” He shook his head—an attempt to clear his mind. “San Diego.”

  “You don’t get a lot of skiing in there,” she commented. “Are you a medical doctor, sir?”

  “Yes. Oncology,” he offered.

  Nicole nodded. “Is the purpose of this trip solely vacation?”

  “We ski every Christmas holiday,” the mother said. “Last year it was Telluride.”

  “The year before, Stowe,” Dr. Esparza continued. “Every year we find the snow. For Christmas.”

  “Do you work, Mrs. Esparza? Outside the home?”

  “No, not anymore.”

  “She was a nurse,” Dr. Esparza said.

  “For a few short years.”

  “How old are you, Joaquin?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “And Beatrice?”

  “Fourteen,” the mother said. “June fourth, two thousand five. Her birthday. Just one day before mine.”

  Nicole pulled a small notebook out of her coat pocket. She’d make a note of the important details of their conversation when she got back to the Yukon. When she interviewed people, especially the first pass, she liked to watch their faces, read their body language, which often told her more than words or tone.

  “We’ll need some information,” she told them. “Your full names—all of you, Beatrice included—ages, address, phone numbers.” She handed the notebook to the doctor and then gave her full attention to Joaquin.

  “Your sister left to meet with friends?”


  He shrugged, as much as he could and still maintain his sloucher pose against the doorjamb. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “But she has some here? New acquaintances?”

  “We’ve met a few people on the slopes. We’ve been invited to parties and stuff.”

  “Could Beatrice have gone to a party last night?”

  His gaze remained steady. “Maybe, but she didn’t tell me that.”

  “Would she have told you?”

  He seemed to think about that. “Yes.”

  “Sheriff?” Dr. Esparza stood. His wife sat in his shadow, teetering on the edge of the couch. He extended his hand and offered her the notebook. It was open, and Nicole could see that he had filled the page with a thin, scratchy print she would have difficulty reading.

  Nicole left Joaquin at the door and pocketed her notebook, but she had a few more questions for the Esparzas.

  “Was Beatrice sick?”

  “You mean like a cold? The flu?” Dr. Esparza asked.

  “I mean like bronchitis or pneumonia.”

  “No,” the mother answered. “Not even the sniffles.”

  “But your younger girls have colds?”

  Dr. Esparza stepped forward. “Yes, we told you that. And Beatrice was rarely sick. She took care of herself. She ate the right foods, took vitamins. She trained. Exercised regularly. She expected more from her body than illness.”

  “She’s a top runner,” Mrs. Esparza added, and she smiled brightly though her tears were still falling. “Always first place.”

  High expectations, and Nicole wondered, how wide a margin had they given their daughter for failure? For learning? For being a teenage girl craving exploration and independence?

  “Then why was she prescribed Augmentin?” Nicole asked.

  Dr. Esparza shook his head. “You’re wrong. Beatrice had no need for the medication, and had she, it never would have been Augmentin.”

  “Beatrice is allergic to anything in the penicillin family,” the mother explained.

  Nicole chewed on that, then pulled her smartphone from her parka pocket. She asked the Esparzas for a moment’s patience and pressed speed dial for Lars.

  “Yeah, Chief?” Lars’s voice was sharp, slightly breathless. He was still in the field, knee-deep in yesterday’s snowfall and rummaging for any beacon of evidence.

  “You close to the evidence bin?”

  “I’m sitting on it.”

  He’d pulled chain-of-evidence duty.

  “Good. I want you to take a picture of the pill bottle—get Beatrice’s name, doctor’s name, drug, and dosage—and send it to me.”

  “Doing it, but do you want to tell me why?”

  “Beatrice didn’t get sick,” Nicole informed him. She sensed that the Esparzas weren’t raising merely a child in Beatrice. The girl had been in training, possibly from conception. Cultivated—mind, body, spirit—for high performance. The doctor’s tone had said as much. And that bothered Nicole. “And she was allergic to Augmentin.”

  There was a pause on the other end, and then Lars said, “No shit?”

  “No.” Cell to ear, she glanced at the Esparzas. Joaquin leaned. Mrs. Esparza rocked. The doctor stood, hands in pockets, elbows twitching, eyes locked on Nicole.

  “Done,” Lars announced, and a moment later a ding sounded from her cell. She ended the call.

  “We found a pill bottle,” Nicole explained. She walked deeper into the room until she met the windows, the drawn curtains, and turned. It put her closer to Joaquin, to Mrs. Esparza, and left the doctor outside the tight circle Nicole had created. “The prescription is written out for Beatrice. Five hundred milligrams of Augmentin, two times daily.”

  “One thousand milligrams daily?” Dr. Esparza stopped just short of a scoff.

  Mrs. Esparza shook her head. “That’s too much. A girl her size, half that would do.”

  “But she’s allergic to Augmentin,” Nicole pointed out.

  “If she wasn’t allergic,” the mother said. “If she were prescribed that, as you say.”

  “What happened to Beatrice if she took Augmentin? What symptoms?”

  “A rash. It’s called a body flush, because on Beatrice it erupted on her torso, traveled up her throat and into her underarms,” Mrs. Esparza explained. “It’s itchy and uncomfortable, and Beatrice would never take it. She knew better.”

  “And she was never sick anyway.” Nicole continued to probe.

  “She wasn’t.” Joaquin spoke, and his voice fell on the room like a solid chunk of cement. Strong, heavy, unyielding.

  Nicole chose to ignore him for now and continued with the doctor.

  She opened the attachment Lars had sent her. The photo was blurry, but the type on the prescription label was readable. “You want to guess the name of the prescribing physician?”

  “Not my husband,” Mrs. Esparza said. “No, never. That is against ethics. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “He wouldn’t make so big a mistake, Mrs. Esparza?” Nicole led. “He wouldn’t prescribe his daughter a drug he knew she was allergic to? Or a dosage that was too much? Or he wouldn’t risk his career by prescribing for family?”

  “I would not,” the doctor interrupted. “And I did not.” He paced to the edge of their circle. “You’re mistaken, Sheriff.”

  Nicole held his gaze as she lifted the cell phone. His eyelashes flickered. Creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Then he disconnected and focused on the incriminating photo.

  4

  Dr. Esparza was careful. He was methodical. He was a man of science, a surgeon with a reservoir of strength that steadied him when he found himself in treacherous territory. Nicole recognized that in him because she relied on it herself. But before he could tap into it, his bottom lip trembled and his knees knocked as shock flew through his veins.

  “Impossible,” he murmured.

  But Nicole knew all things were possible. And she knew his initial reaction could be as easily attributed to being caught as it could to the very existence of the pill bottle.

  “Evidence doesn’t lie.” But that wasn’t true. Nicole had often seen evidence manipulated, solid proof reduced to hearsay.

  “I didn’t prescribe that,” he said.

  “Your name is on the bottle.”

  He nodded. “So it is.”

  His tone had a finality about it, so Nicole pressed, “No claims of a stolen prescription pad, Doctor?”

  “Most prescriptions are submitted electronically these days.”

  “No signature required?”

  “Each order is uniquely stamped.”

  “Who has access to your stamp?”

  “Just a handful of people.”

  “You don’t sound concerned.”

  “I treat cancer patients, Sheriff. I have no reason to prescribe Augmentin to anyone. Neither do any of my staff.”

  “And yet here it is.”

  “Here it is,” he agreed.

  A dead end. Nicole changed direction.

  “Is it possible Beatrice ran away?” Nicole offered a way out for the family, but they didn’t take it.

  “No,” Dr. Esparza insisted. “Where would she run to?”

  Not why. No protests about a loving home and all that money could buy. Nothing about the vic having everything she could want and need.

  “When did you realize your daughter was missing, Dr. Esparza?”

  “We didn’t,” he said.

  “We didn’t know,” the mother agreed, “until you called.”

  “You didn’t check on the kids when you returned from the slopes last night?”

  “They’re light sleepers,” the mother said. “We didn’t want to wake them.”

  Nicole let her doubt show through her unwavering stare. The mother’s lips trembled. Dr. Esparza patted her hand and remained firm. He made no move to further support their claim and held Nicole’s gaze with his own.

  Cold or confident? she wondered.

  “The receptionist says Bea
trice hasn’t been around since about four yesterday.”

  “She’s wrong,” the doctor insisted. “I told her that.”

  “Did your daughter leave the resort willingly, Dr. Esparza?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Esparza said. “She took her purse.”

  “And her coat?” Nicole asked. “Is Beatrice’s coat missing?”

  The woman pushed to her feet. Her hands, no longer pinned between her knees, fluttered in the air in front of her. “The closet,” she said, and moved toward a door near the front of the suite. “She was a responsible girl, you know? An A-plus girl, honor roll and track. My daughter loved to run. She was like wind. Fast. This was her first year on the cross-country team, and she has many ribbons. That’s good for her first year, yes?” She opened the closet door. Nicole was standing behind her now and peered over the mother’s shoulder. Three thick parkas hung from the pole: black, cobalt blue, red with a fur-lined hood. “No,” Mrs. Esparza said. “It’s gone.”

  She turned to Nicole, her eyes wet and pleading. “Her coat is gone.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Purple. Her favorite color. Her gloves and scarf too. Everything purple. The school color, you know?”

  Beatrice had been wearing a purple cashmere sweater, Nicole remembered. And purple knee-high socks.

  Nicole looked at Joaquin. “Did you and Beatrice attend the same school?”

  “No.”

  “Beatrice attended private school,” the father said.

  “Joaquin did too,” Mrs. Esparza offered. “But—”

  “It was not a good fit,” Dr. Esparza finished.

  Nicole ignored the parents in favor of Joaquin and his angst, which promised a better chance at truth.

  “Public school?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Voluntarily? Or were you asked to leave?”

  “Why does this matter?” Dr. Esparza cut in.

  “Joaquin?” Nicole pressed.

  “I was kicked out.” For a moment he looked apologetic as he glanced at his parents. “It wasn’t their fault.”

  “Why?”

  Dr. Esparza stepped forward, blocking Nicole’s view of his slouching son. “My son is not in question here.”

  “Everyone is in question,” Nicole corrected him. “Your daughter is dead, sir, and we have a lot of questions about that. You should too.” She stepped closer. “In fact, it’s a little concerning that you don’t.”